


The Bells of Saint Clement's

by Kintatsujo



Series: Needles and Pins [2]
Category: Ib (Video Game)
Genre: Also guest starring Ib's adorable child, F/M, Forgotten Portrait, Gaslighting, Gen, Guest starring a returning OC from Mary Mary, Original Character Death(s), There is a swear in here, This is actually the story he was created for haha, not another one
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-19
Updated: 2016-09-19
Packaged: 2018-08-16 00:20:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,840
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8079541
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kintatsujo/pseuds/Kintatsujo
Summary: A sort of melancholy has followed Ib throughout her life, ever since that strange day fourteen years before that she found a lighter in her pocket.  When visiting an art exhibit by the increasingly popular Guertena, she and her family are pulled into a mysterious and dangerous world, and for the first time, Ib remembers who she named her son for...Note: Slowly adding art to this story!





	

/=O=\

Ib was sure she should be happy. At twenty-three, she was the mother of a beautiful four-year old boy, her husband was steadily employed, and although they'd had to move to a city far from her parents for his job, she did have things to occupy her time and spoke to her mother often, on the phone during those lonesome hours Walter was at work.

Little Garry was beautiful, although it wasn't the same as adult conversation. He'd gotten Walter's gray eyes and Ib's dark hair, probably better for him than inheriting Ib's red eyes and Walter's red hair, and was as sweet and gentle as any young boy could be expected to be. She wasn't sure where she'd pulled his name from, but she was sure it suited him.

So why she still carried the old lighter everywhere she went, and found herself staring into space sometimes as she played with it, not mentioning it to Walter and certainly never telling her mother about it, was something of a mystery. Ib was sure she should be happy, but whenever she found it in her pocket again, as she had for the first time fourteen years ago, she felt this surging wave of sadness.

But she couldn't bring herself to just throw the lighter away, and more than that, she didn't like not knowing where it was. She'd had it since she was nine and hadn't hurt anything yet, so Ib was sure she wasn't a pyromaniac.

She just... needed the lighter.

And she never, ever mentioned it to Walter, even though she'd had it longer than she'd known him. He'd just worry and take it away, with the best intentions.

"We should start on Garry's cultural education," Walter commented over supper. Ib glanced at young Garry (why her mind always supplied "young" or "little" before his name was another compulsion Ib didn't know what to do with). Most of his lo mein was in his hair. "I saw a poster for the new exhibit at Louis Gallery-- Weiss Guertena?"

A sharp chill ran down Ib's spine and her hand slipped into her lap, surruptitiously feeling the lighter in her sweater pocket. She'd found the lighter on the way home from a Guertena exhibit, hadn't she? She hadn't thought about it before, but now she was deadly certain.

"I don't know, honey," she said quietly. Surprise registered in Walter's face. It was rare for her to disagree with him. "Little Garry's awfully small, he might find an art exhibit boring."

"Psh," Walter answered. "It's never too early to start exposing a child to culture, sweetie-pie. You'll see." He said it with the kind of finality that indicated he'd already bought tickets.

"We can't at least wait until the next exhibit at Louis Gallery?" Ib asked. "I've never really liked Guertena."

"But he's become so popular in the last fifteen years!" Walter protested, and Ib knew she wasn't getting any say in this.

The next day, grocery shopping with little Garry in tow and out of Walter's eye, Ib got a fuel refill for her lighter. The tightness in her chest eased somewhat... although she still didn't want to go to the exhibit.

=o=

The day that they were to go to the exhibit was sunny and warm, and little Garry fought with Ib as she wrestled him into his little dress jacket and black sneakers. "Too hot!" he scowled, and Ib kissed his forehead.

"The gallery will be air-conditioned, baby," Ib told him. She pulled her long dark hair into a tight bun; Walter insisted that she never cut it but didn't like her showing it off where other men could leer at her. After a moment's thought, she tucked a lemon candy into his pocket and another into his little fist. "Don't touch _anything_  at the exhibit, and don't let anything touch you, either," she told him.

"Things are gonna try an' touch me?" little Garry asked, puzzled, and Ib blinked. She wasn't sure why she'd said it; she usually tried not to say things that might scare him.

"Probably not, but all the same," she said. "And stay near me, okay?"

Little Garry nodded and put his arms around her neck. "I love you, mommy," he muttered.

Ib almost couldn't bear the dread that touched her at these words, and held him tightly. "I love you too, Bear," she said.

Louis Gallery was different from the one that had been near where Ib grew up. That had been sparse and modern, utilitarian to let the art stand as much on its own as possible, boxy hallways and rectangular lights in the ceilings. Louis Gallery, on the other hand, had been styled as if in the tastes of Louis XIV, the Sun King, with long mirrored halls and the lights styled like gaslamps, the ceilings arched, ornate pillars and wide rounded steps leading up and down. Paintings got their own alcoves along the walls, and it was larger than the gallery she'd first been to, as well. Ib found herself shuddering at the ornamental curtains here and there, unable to shake the sense that something could leap from behind them.

Her baby was fidgeting at the reception desk, so Ib turned to Walter and suggested that the two of them go on ahead.

Walter nodded. "I'll catch up," he said. "Don't go talking to any handsome strangers, now."

Ib sighed as she led little Garry away. Why couldn't Walter be happy with the fact that she'd chosen him?

"That lady's pretty, Mommy," young Garry commented, and Ib looked up at the portrait in startlement. "But kinda scary."

"The Lady in Red," Ib said. "She is kind of scary, huh?"

"Why?" her baby asked.

"Well," Ib explained, "People think Guertena based her on women who wanted to marry him but didn't love him. They just wanted his money, and I guess he was pretty unhappy about it." She tried never to talk down to little Garry; she remembered always hating that.

"I wouldn't like it either," he decided. Then he pointed further down the hall. "How come those ladies don't have any heads?"

Ib looked "Lady in Red" in the eye and patted the pocket of her long red skirt before turning away, making sure the lighter was still there. She didn't know why, but the painting seemed to make her even more uneasy than it did her son. She swung him up into her arms and walked closer to "Death of the Individual," the rigid statues in their rigid short skirts and high heels. "Why do _you_  think they don't have heads, Bear?" she asked him.

Little Garry pouted thoughtfully. "Cause they don't have brains," he said seriously, "they don't need heads."

"Ah," Ib said. "Yes, Bear, that makes a lot of sense. More sense than your father, anyway." Yesterday Walter had explained the deep meanings behind all the different colors of cloth and how the people depicted in "Death" had clearly come from a time of deep poverty because of how short their skirts were.

The boy giggled, then pointed to another table. "And those guys are nothing BUT heads because they've got brains and don't do anything with them."

Ib looked at the row of unseeing eyes and shuddered unconsciously. She really did not like Guertena's work. There was no fighting the disturbing feeling the art gave her. Ib was glad Walter hadn't noticed her putting on practical shoes.

They moved on. There was "Fisherman," "Worry," "The Juggler..." Ib stopped at a line of photographs.

"Mary," she read. "Among Guertena's last known works, 'Mary' sadly went missing between exhibits before she had a chance to be properly displayed. Despite that she was not based on any real person, like most of Guertena's portraits, these photographs cannot do justice to the surreal level of realism that was one of Guertena's trademarks."

Ib looked up at the photographs. A blonde little girl looked back with eyes as blue as the sky. She shuddered again, despite the girl's innocent smile.

"You don't like her, Mommy?" little Garry asked softly. "But she looks so nice."

Ib ran a hand through her son's hair. "It's best not to always trust appearances," she murmured, and they walked on.

There was "Hanging Man." Ib barely spared it a glance; she didn't want little Garry looking at it for too long. In the alcove directly across, as if matched to it, hung "Forgotten Portrait."

"The blue man is smiling, Mommy," Garry commented, and Ib's chest tightened all over again. Her hand slipped into her skirt pocket, fingers brushing the lighter.

He _was_  smiling, nestled in the folds of his ragged blue coat, head slanted back against the dark wall behind him. Smiling like a man at peace, she thought, despite all the pain and fear that had led him up to that point. Smiling like someone who had made a decision he felt he could stand by. Ib shook her head. She was reading way too much into the piece, just like Walter.

"Sweetie-pie, Garry, there you are." Speak of the devil. Walter put an arm around Ib's waist and turned to look at "Forgotten Portrait." He frowned. "Among Guertena's last works," he read, "'Forgotten Portrait' depicts a young man sleeping. While there is no evidence he is based on any real person, many viewers report a deep sense of bittersweetness when looking at the painting. It is unknown what inspired Guertena to paint this particular piece." He slipped his arm from Ib's waist and shrugged. "Just don't fall in love with him, Ib, he's too handsome for his own good."

"Sorry?" Ib said. "Walter, he's a painting."

"A very handsome, realistic painting," Walter muttered. "It's creepy, and since when was purple hair in fashion when Guertena was alive?"

Ib looked at him in surprise. "What, you don't think it's a metaphor for, I don't know, food poisoning?"

"Purple is a color of protection and royalty," Walter responded, sounding miffed. "It was a joke, honey, forget it."

It would have been more of a joke, Ib felt privately, if she didn't feel so drawn to the piece. And if Walter didn't react nastily to every male human being Ib laid eyes on.

"His rose is gone," little Garry said, and Ib's heart skipped a beat.

Walter snorted. "What makes you think there's a rose, little man?" he asked. "If there's not a rose in the painting, don't fill one in."

But their baby pointed at the floor in the painting. "Blue petals," he said.

"Roses aren't blue," Walter corrected. "Roses are red, roses are pink, roses are yellow, roses are white, roses are peach, roses are orange, but roses aren't blue. Violets are blue. You know, like in the poem? Roses are red, violets are blue, sugar is sweet and so are you?"

Little Garry glared at his father. "Violets are purple," he answered. "That's a blue rose."

"That's enough, the two of you," Ib said quietly, worried that Walter would hear the sudden soreness in her throat. "Let's move on."

From then onward their journey through the gallery was accompanied by Walter's endless commentary. If she was honest, Ib still liked little Garry's better. To the child, "Your Dark Figure" was just about a cat begging for dinner, face pushed into its human's. Ib had owned a cat when she was younger, the animal now living with her parents, and agreed that the portrait captured the feeling perfectly.

To her husband, however, it was a story about paranoia. Walter just seemed to be wired into finding the deepest meaning in everything an artist did, but some of the meanings he found felt so far wide of the mark that Ib had to bite her lip to keep from laughing at him. Little Gary was generally frustrated with these instead, pounding against his father's double-breasted gray jacket with tiny fists.

If it had been anyone but Walter, Ib would have suspected him of yanking the child's chain, but she knew he was perfectly serious when he called "The Fisherman" a "study into the human condition of loss and searching."

"Don't recognize this piece," Walter suddenly said, and Ib was pulled from her reverie. "In fact-- is this hallway in the map?"

And Ib saw it, a dark world spanning before her, and her chest went cold.

"'Fabricated World'-- This is really interesting," Walter said. "Look at how he's painted distortions of his other paintings into this."

The lights flickered. The sedate classical music that had been playing over the gallery's intercom since they'd arrived went silent.

"Mommy, what's that?" little Garry asked, and he was looking at something Ib couldn't see.

The lights guttered out.

Garry squirmed in her arms. "I want to go look, Mommy," he said.

"Damn it all," Walter said. "You two stay here, I'm going to see if I can find a gallery worker."

"Walter," Ib said. "Wait!"

But he was already turning the corner, and that was when little Garry broke free and ran in the opposite direction.

 _"BEAR!"_  The tail of his jacket fluttered around the corner's edge, and Ib tore after him, skirt bunched into one hand.

But when she rounded the corner herself, she couldn't even hear his clattering footsteps.

The gallery was empty.

And her baby was gone.

=o=

Ib wasn't sure how long she wandered the empty gallery, looking for little Garry or her husband, calling their names. She heard the crashing of glass at one point and ran for the source, hand in pocket around the lighter, but all she found was that someone had broken free a fireaxe from its glass emergency box.

 _That_  was less than comforting. It might have been Walter, but it also might not have been. And what if her Bear came upon the glass and cut himself?

She ignored the tall glass windows with their black latticework. Somehow she knew they held no answers for her.

Footsteps that weren't her own rang between the silent walls. Ib ignored these too.

She returned to "Forgotten Portrait," unsure why but unwilling to go back to "Fabricated World." There was something... safer about the young man in his tattered coat.

A deep frown darkened his brow.

Ib stared. He'd been smiling before, she was absolutely sure, because little Garry had commented on it.

Thinking about her son again brought a fresh flood of tears, and Ib tried to stop herself, hiccuping into her hand. "My baby's lost, Garry, Garry," she sobbed, and she couldn't be sure if she was simply saying her son's name or addressing the young man in the painting.

Blue paint trickled from the frame. Startled to notice it, Ib stared, wiping at her eyes and feeling like a child. She sniffled.

Slowly, the paint took the paths of letters and began to form a phrase. The handwriting was neater than she expected, although Ib couldn't have said why she expected anything out of the penmanship of a paint trickle.

"Return to the Abyss," it read. "You'll find your son with me."

Ib's breath caught in her throat and she bit her lip. Return? There was a painting downstairs spread across the floor so that it could be seen from the balconies, named "Abyss of the Deep." It was probably what the paint words meant... but... Return?

But something eased in her at the thought that her baby was with the man in the portrait-- this sense that she could trust his intentions if not his ability, at least so far to taking care of a child. Her child.

So she started moving.

"Abyss of the Deep" had a link missing from its little rope fence. Ib watched the painting dubiously, silently.

Something was pressing insistently at the back of her brain, something that said she'd seen this all before...

And it had to do with the lighter.

"Garry," she murmured, and knew with certainty that this time she _was_  addressing the man in "Forgotten Portrait." "I'm going to need you to look out for me, if you don't mind."

=o=

Yes... there was no denying the wash of familiarity that came with descending the blue steps. Ib kept her eyes on her feet, ignoring the flickering light of the massive fish that swam around her. She remembered-- he couldn't touch her and she couldn't touch him.

She had left Garry behind because the painting girl had killed him.

And she had burned Mary to death because of what she'd done.

Ib made the decision, as she reached the bottom step, that she'd have to be prepared to be the one the Gallery had it in for this time, for her crime against Mary. She'd loved Mary well enough, she recognized, but a sane, safe person didn't do the things that Mary did. Because nothing about the Gallery was sane or safe.

She turned around to look up the wide stairwell, and was unsurprised to see it gone, solid wall in its place.

The Gallery looked different. Before, it had been built like the gallery from Ib's childhood, utilitarian and plain. And now it was built like the Louis Gallery, ornate and frilly. She was in a wide circular room, false arches all around and two doorways on opposite sides, halfway down from her entrance. Her rose, she saw, sat on a polished wooden table with a mirror behind it, directly opposite herself.

Ib strode forward and glared at her reflection. It didn't leap out, and had the decency to look like Ib herself, dark hair pulled into the tight bun, white sweater, mid-calf length red skirt and black ankle boots, the practical shoes she'd been glad Walter hadn't noticed, not ugly but not exactly dressy either. She didn't look anything like the nine-year old who had been here before, although she still kept bangs.

She plucked the rose from its vase and inspected it. Ten petals this time, ten petals like Garry had had. At least there was that.

When Ib looked up, her reflection had changed. She stepped back, then ran a hand over her chest to be sure there wasn't actually anything there.

In the mirror, the red rose had put out golden threads from its stem that ran into Ib's chest. Behind her, written so that she could read it frontways in the mirror, read the words "AS THE ROSE ROTS SO DO YOU." Ib turned around and looked up to find that there were no letters there for the mirror to reflect.

She slipped a hand into her pocket to reassure herself that Garry's lighter was still there, grateful for the compulsion-- which she knew now had been based on her forgotten knowledge-- that had led her to refill it.

Ib pulled it out and held it up.

"Do you see this?" she asked. "I used this to kill Mary."

The wall that had once led up back to Louis Gallery filled with words, a loud stamping accompanying their appearance.

D O N T - Y O U - D A R E !

"I won't, as long as you remember that I can if I want to," Ib answered seriously. She didn't know how much of the Gallery was one entity; maybe it was all Guertena's ghost, fractured by his creative vision-- maybe that was all Mary herself had been all along. But it seemed to communicate with itself well enough. This probably wouldn't protect her from the Ladies or headless statues-- or Mary's little friends, it hadn't protected Garry from them-- but it might discourage the walls a little.

Carefully arranging the rose in her bun, Ib set out to see what the Gallery had to offer her.

=o=

It was a fairly quiet trip at first. Ib's memories probably would have been fuzzy if she'd been allowed to forget them on her own, but somehow the Gallery suppressing them left them fresh and vivid when they returned to her. There were changes, here and there, and a lot more of the mannequin heads just scattered throughout the Gallery, long before she remembered their first appearance, but the gaps in her knowledge caused by the changes in the Gallery itself were easy enough to sort through using the maturity and greater wisdom she had by being fourteen years older.

But there were also cats, now. Cats everywhere, sleek cats, scruffy cats, cats with shoulders like mob goons, cats, cats, cats. Ib watched them warily, and they watched her back, unblinkingly. She'd leave one in a room and find another, of completely different color, waiting for her in the next room. She wondered if they were there to rush her in case she used the lighter, or if they had something to do with Garry.

Maybe Walter was right, and "Your Dark Figure" _was_  about paranoia.

The mirrors had changed too. Now that the Gallery had been reminded of the event, she was having "MURDERER" written across her forehead, or her eyes would be blacked out, or her reflection would grin like one of the red-eyed dolls, mouth sewn shut and all.

But things changed when she arrived at the Lady in Red's room.

She heard the panting as soon as she opened the door. No, not exactly panting... more like a ragged, rhythmic groan. Was the Lady already awake? Trying not to make a sound, Ib eased through the door, keeping her eyes open and heading cautiously for the sound. She kept her hand in her pocket.

The Lady in Red lay across the floor, bleeding red paint. Her frame was damaged, and her hands lay several steps away from her arms. She lay there on her face, and Ib had never realized that she could feel sorry for one of the painted women, but there it was.

Ib kept her distance, even though a mad part of her wanted to move forward and take the shaking shoulders in hand, to ask what had happened.

"Ib?"

Ib's heart nearly stopped, and she spun in the direction of the hopeful, familiar voice.

Walter was holding the missing fireaxe, red paint dripping from its blade. His usually neat short red hair was tousled, and the horrible green and yellow plaid tie he'd worn to the exhibit was missing. An orange rose had been stuck in the lapel of his gray double-breasted jacket.

"What happened to your tie?" Ib asked stupidly.

"You don't want to know," her husband answered, mouth a grim line. He looked around. "Where's Garry?"

"He got away from me," Ib said, "But I think I know where he is."

Walter's face darkened. "He _got away from you?_  In this horrible place? What kind of a mother are you?"

"We were in the upper gallery when it happened," Ib snapped, hurt. "When he turned a corner he vanished, if this place was remotely like the real world I would have had him again in seconds."

The slap stung, but nowhere near as much as realizing that Walter had done it.

"Don't make stupid excuses when our son's safety is involved," Walter told her. "And how the hell would you know where Garry is?"

"The Forgotten Portrait told me," Ib said. She wasn't about to tell Walter she'd been here before, not after he'd slapped her. "We have to keep moving forward."

Ib had genuinely thought of Walter as a gentle man when she'd met him. She understood now that she'd been comparing all of her boyfriends to Garry; the scruffy boys she'd had crushes on through high school and the silly things that Walter used to say about being her shining knight and protecting her when she needed him. But Walter really wasn't a gentle man. She could forgive violence against the Gallery-- it felt more like self-defense-- but that slap...

She paused in the library after the Lady in Red's room, looking through the books.

"What are you doing?" Walter demanded, irritably. "I've already gotten through here once, that door is unlocked." And he marched over to grab her arm and pull her away.

But Ib had already found the slip of paper that read "I'll wait for you past the Ladies' Gallery" in Garry's handwriting.

=o=

There was some more yelling before they finally arrived at the hall of heads; Walter nearly gave his rose to the blue monster picture and when he realized they'd have to go through the mannequin maze he made her find the switch herself.

There were no cats in the Ladies' room. Walter let out a long, soft curse as he saw the rows and rows of Ladies in Colors, then hefted his fireaxe.

Ib shook her head. "Not unless you have to, because you might wake all of them," she whispered, and marched forward.

The room seemed a lot larger than last time, and the Ladies hung everywhere. And the painting of "Hanging Man" that had numbers on its clothes now had Walter's face for some reason, blood dripping from his eyes and a faint smile on his face. Her husband shuddered at the sight.

The smaller room that Ib remembered once having a painting of her parents now featured a large painting of Garry and little Garry, her Bear lifted up on Garry's hip as he gave them an encouraging smile. Bear was holding a small white rose.

"What-- what is this?!" Walter demanded. "Does this mean that the-- man in 'Forgotten Portrait' _has_  our son!? Is that what he told you?" He waved the axe dangerously.

"That doesn't look like the smile of a man who wants us to die in here to me, Walter," Ib answered, pushing a shelf in front of the tall latticework window.

"What are you doing?" Walter asked.

A Lady burst through the wall.

Walter actually screamed as the fireaxe dropped into the Lady in Green's forehead. It took him some effort to yank it free, but the Lady was still snatching at the orange rose as he shoved her away, and more were coming behind her.

"Don't waist time on this!" Ib bellowed, putting more force into her voice than she had in years. Several of Walter's petals had fluttered to the floor. Ib grabbed him by the arm and manhandled him to the door--

Locked. Naturally.

"Fireaxe!" she ordered, and Walter had a moment of clarity and smashed the door down with it. "Be careful not to trip!" she warned him, as they came out into the Ladies' gallery. Mannequin heads littered the floor, staring at them with bleeding eyes.

Ib kept a firm grip on her husband's arm and dragged him to the last door, now unlocked. She shoved him through it and yanked the door shut.

Walter looked ill. "Why..." he gasped, "Why didn't we think to just break that door down in the first place?"

Ib didn't look at him. "Because, dear," she answered, "The painting ladies can't go through doors we don't break down."

"I think I need... to lie down," Walter mumbled. He hadn't moved from his seat on the floor. Ib turned around.

He was missing all but two petals. Come to think of it-- Ib plucked her own rose from her hair to give it a look. Eight petals. They needed a vase. "Walter, stay with me," she said. "I can't drag you to the nearest vase on my own."

Walter groaned and tilted back onto the smooth marble floor.

"Oh, damn," Ib growled.

The sound of footsteps echoed quietly through the hall.

"Can we help?" Garry's voice asked.

"Mama!" Bear called.

=o=

They dragged Walter into the nearby "safe" room, Garry lifting him by the shoulders and Ib getting his feet. She delicately freed the orange rose from his lapel and placed it in the vase, but Walter didn't wake, the only change being that his face relaxed. "Let him rest," Ib muttered. "He's been working very hard, fighting through the Gallery."

"So I should say," Garry agreed, eyeing the dripping axe.

There was a stretch of silence as Ib busied herself with examining little Garry, her Bear, and looking over her baby's rose. Three petals safe and sound.

"I tried sticking his rose into the vase I have in the Sketchbook," Garry commented. "Three petals are all the petals he seems to have."

"I'm glad you got to him right away," Ib said. "I couldn't bear the thought of him running into one of the Ladies all alone."

Garry shrugged, still skinny in his blue coat. "When I realized that the Gallery was pulling the three of you in, I led him to me," he confessed. "You might remember he was chasing something you couldn't see? That was me. I saw how small he was, and... well. I know that I'm basically the safest thing in here."

Ib cocked her head at him, studying him. "You don't look any older," she said.

He smiled ruefully, tilting his head away to hide his eyes. "When you killed Mary, the Gallery revived me to take her place. I don't think it would have happened if she'd gotten what she was after, but... this place, you see, follows its own twisted logic."

Mary... "What _was_  Mary after, exactly?" She remembered a few pages, about taking someone's place...

Garry looked her straight in the eyes. "Mary needed to sacrifice a living soul in order to leave," he told her, covering Bear's ears as he said it. "And now, so do I, which means I'm not getting out anytime soon. I'm _not_  one of the original artworks, and I refuse to make such a cruel sacrifice." He smiled at her. Ib's chest felt cold. "I already had my taste of the real world."

Ib felt hot tears well up in her eyes. "But that's--!" she whispered. "That's already so cruel!"

Bear crawled from Garry's lap and into hers. "Don't cry, Mama," he said, his own voice edging toward tears. He reached up and patted at her cheeks.

Garry reached over Bear's head and wiped at the tears as well. "Little Garry's right, Ib," he whispered. "Don't cry."

Ib grasped his hand and pressed it against her cheek, sobbing into his palm. "Just so unfair!"

"I feel blessed," Garry said. "I got to see you again, see what a vibrant woman you became. I got to see that you went on to live your life, and this time I'll be able to get you out as easy as anything, because this world at least sort of listens to me now." He chuckled and ruffled Bear's hair. "And I got to meet your son, who is a great little kid."

"Big Garry says I'm gonna be a great art critic for a newspaper!" Bear told her, suddenly happy again at the prospect. "He says I got lots of good intrepidations!"

And Ib giggled, because what else could she do in response to her son?

On the other side of the room, Walter groaned. Instinctively, Ib leaned back from Garry, just a little. He caught her eyes and sat up straighter himself.

Was that silly? Maybe, if she hadn't named her son unconsciously after him. If she hadn't been drawn, from the moment she started thinking about boys, to ones that echoed him. And if Walter wasn't so jealous.

"What's up with all the cats?" she asked, just to have something to say. "Are they mad because of the lighter or do they have to do with you?"

"I think the Gallery responds to what its visitors respond to, if that makes sense," Garry said. "The Lady in Red has a lot of feeling behind her on Guertena's part, of course, so she's a fixture. But you responded strongly to 'Death of the Individual' as a young girl and I was really unnerved by 'Hanged Man,' so the Gallery shoved those on us a bit more. I'm going to guess that your husband had a strong reaction to 'Your Dark Figure?'"

"He thought it was about paranoia," Ib explained. "Walter's... 'intrepidations' of art are usually a bit complex." She smiled at Bear and hugged him close.

"Ugh..." Walter groaned again, this time rolling onto his side, then sat bolt upright. "Ib? Sweetie-pie?! Where--"

"I'm right here," Ib assured him. "And look who came to meet us!"

"Garry!" Walter cried, rushing forward and snatching their son out of Ib's lap. He turned and glared at the original Garry. "And this is 'Forgotten Portrait,'" he continued.

"His real name's Garry too, just like me!" Bear giggled happily, and Walter froze, staring at Ib.

"Is that... so," he said, and Ib felt oddly cold. "Well, thank you for keeping an eye on my son."

"It was my pleasure," Garry answered. "Anything for Ib."

Walter didn't comment on the fact that Garry seemed to know Ib, and that was worse than him questioning it. It meant he'd already formed an opinion, and Ib knew from the knit of his brow that he'd started on a slow angry boil.

"Well," Walter said, and he pulled his orange rose from the vase and stuck it in her hair, opposite her red one. His hand trailed her jaw a little more roughly than she was used to on its way away. "Let's get the hell out of here, Ib."

=o=

They traveled in a stony silence for a while after that, Walter keeping a solid grip on Ib's shoulder, as if he was trying to keep her from walking too close to Garry. As before, the Gallery seemed to be bigger than it had been when she'd been a child-- she remembered a chained exhibit, not far from the safe room. But they were walking down the silent hallway for nearly four minutes before anyone said anything.

"So," Walter said, "You know each other?"

"We met fourteen years ago," Garry answered honestly. "Although it barely feels like it." He paused and scratched a tabbycat behind the ears. It didn't react like a real cat would, instead just glaring at Walter. "Time doesn't move the same way in here."

"Ib never told me she was naming our son after someone she'd known as a child," Walter said lightly.

"Would you have believed her?" Garry asked, grinning.

Ib kept silent. If she said that she'd forgotten, Garry might feel hurt, and Walter most certainly wouldn't believe it. There wasn't any point.

"She wouldn't have had to tell me everything, just that it was the name of a little boy she'd known as a child," Walter answered. "And I might have insisted on a different name if I'd known."

"Ah--" Garry said, laughing. "I wasn't a child. We met because we were trapped here together. I was the same age as I am now, frozen as the Forgotten Portrait."

"And too handsome for your own good," Walter muttered darkly, so low that Ib was sure she was the only one to hear.

=o=

The Gallery was short work with a willing escort. Ib remembered that things had gotten easier when she'd been with Mary, too.

They avoided the doll room altogether. "I don't... I still don't... we don't, ah, talk," Garry said. The shadows on his face were swiftly replaced with a smile. "My domain now is what was once Mary's sketchbook world."

"And a good thing," Ib answered, ignoring the eyes of the mannequin heads and turning Bear's face to her shoulder. "Considering the door to the real Gallery is there."

"We're getting out?" Walter asked, relieved. "I can't wait to get away from all these damned cats."

One of them yowled.

"We're almost there," Garry assured him, pointing toward the downward stairwell. "I'll warn you, Ib, the Sketchbook is... a little different now."

Even with the warning, she gasped when she saw-- the streets were rendered in graphite, not crayon, washing the Sketchbook in gray and black. The little town Garry had built for himself looked so familiar-- it looked--

"This is my hometown!" Ib exclaimed. "Bear, look, Mister Garry drew the town where I grew up!" She laughed, bouncing the boy in her arms.

"It's not exact," Garry said, and then pointed. "That's the shop I told you about that sold macaroons. Remember? Next to it is the little Lawson's where I used to shop, and on the other side is the bookstore. And that's actually my art school down the street over there. If we walked far enough, the town gives way to a beach I used to like, but it's not the same in pencil." He looked wistful.

"This is the town where Grandma and Grandpa live?" her little Garry asked, so quietly that Ib stopped, startled. She hadn't thought about it: her son had never met his grandparents.

"Yes," she said. "Yes. When we get out of here, we'll go visit them, baby Bear." She brushed his dark hair aside and kissed him. "I promise."

"And deal with _another cat_  glaring at me?" Walter asked, brushing past them. "I hate to disappoint you, little man, but it's not likely."

Ib gaped at his retreating back. He-- really? She put Bear down. "Baby, you stay with Big Garry," she said. "Your father and I have to have a talk." Walter turned, surprised.

"What, now?"

"Right now."

=o=

"I don't know if this Gallery has changed you or just brought out the worst in you," Ib snapped, the moment the door to Garry's remembered bakery had shut behind them. Walter's eyebrows rose, then furrowed.

"What is THAT supposed to mean?" he demanded. "You want Garry to meet his grandparents so bad, they can come to us!"

"That's not what I'm talking about!" Ib said, face hot. "That's not what THIS is about! You slapped me!"

"I-- What, you're still angry about that? Why didn't you say anything?"

"Because you were holding a damn fireaxe you'd just used to hack half a woman to pieces and yelling at me!" she shouted.

He was _still_  holding the fireaxe, actually, but she couldn't take it back now. "You lost our son!" Walter snarled angrily.

"We are in a haunted hell maze that could separate us anytime it likes!! I did what I could! We might not have ever seen Bear alive again if Garry hadn't--"

" _Don't call him by our son's name!_ " Walter roared. "I can't believe you never told me about him! What is he, your fucking first love?"

"I don't know and this isn't about him!" Ib screamed back. "I'm tired of you treating me like a child or a criminal all the time! We wouldn't even be here if you'd just listened to me and waited for the next exhibit, but apparently how I feel about things doesn't matter next to what you want!"

"You could have told me it was dangerous!" Walter was waving the fireaxe now.

"Based on WHAT?" Ib asked, still screaming. "The fact that Guertena's paintings tried to eat me when I was nine?! You'd have carted me off to a mental hospital!"

"And if you were in a mental hospital right now, we'd be visiting you instead of here! Personally I think that's preferable!" Walter's face was red as his hair. "Unless-- you _knew_  he'd be in here, didn't you! You _wanted_ to see him again!"

Ib reared back. "What? No! I thought he was dead!"

"Did you now?" Walter sneered, and Ib knew he didn't believe her. "Maybe I'll have to correct the mistake!" And Ib's chest went cold, like it hadn't since she'd seen Fabricated World, as Walter pushed past her to the door.

"Walter, what are you doing?! WALTER!" Ib grabbed onto his arm, digging the heels of her boots into the graphite linoleum before he could actually reach the outside. "You're not going to--"

There was a breath where she realized that he'd grabbed onto her viciously and was shaking her by the collar of her sweater, and then she tumbled to the floor.

"I'm doing him a favor," Walter snarled. "Trapped in here for eternity is no way to exist."

That was when Ib realized that his rose wasn't in his lapel.

Because it was still in her hair, opposite the red rose. He'd put it there himself.

Garry opened the door. "Is everything okay--IB!" He started forward, but Walter grabbed him by the shoulder and threw him into the glass display. It crashed like real glass. And Walter-- Walter was so much bigger than either of them, really, not quite as tall as Garry but broader in the chest, and Ib watched as he raised the axe over this person who had never done anything but be kind to her--

"Like I said," Walter murmured, "Too handsome for your own good."

"Daddy?" And Ib saw him, her baby, the gray eyes he'd inherited from Walter wide with fear and shining with tears.

Walter's voice was so cold. "Just go outside and shut the door, son. We're almost done here."

Ib snatched the orange rose from her hair and tore the petals off with a fist.

The effect was immediate. Walter cried out and hunched over, clutching at his gut. Garry, coat torn and face scratched from the glass, managed to slide out of the display and to the floor, shuffle-crawling to her side.

Walter looked at her, falling to his knees. "Sweetie-pie, why?"

Ib could feel the tears running down her face. "Because the man I thought I married never would have done the things you've done here," she whispered.

"That's not..." Walter hissed out, cutting off brokenly, and then he toppled to the floor.

"Daddy?" Bear said again, not moving. "Mommy, what happened? Is Daddy okay?"

"Daddy loves you very much, Garry," Ib answered. "But the way Daddy loves Mommy isn't the way you should love a person." She felt the original Garry's eyes on her as she got up from the floor and went to her son. "Daddy'll wake up when we leave, but he's stuck here now."

Little Garry began to cry. She didn't blame him. It didn't make a lot of sense. "Mommy, why was he trying to hurt Big Garry? He looked like a bad guy."

Ib knelt and held him. "Because sometimes the people we love are bad guys, baby. I know it's scary. But that doesn't mean they don't love us, and it doesn't mean we're wrong for loving them."

"I wanna go home..."

"Then we will."

=o=

"You're coming with us, Garry," Ib told him once they'd entered the mirror Gallery. She took his hand. _I'm not leaving you behind again._  "I'm not leaving you with Walter."

Garry looked at little Garry, who still had his face against his mother's shoulder. "Is little Garry okay with that?" he asked. "I don't want to make him unhappy."

One shining gray eye emerged to peer at him. "I don't want Big Garry to stay here," Bear mumbled, and Ib squeezed him lovingly.

"Then I'll come back," Garry said, and there was a smile on his face that looked as relieved as it did kind.

=o=

......

=o=

......

=o=

......

=o=

Ib turned to her boyfriend to ask him if he could remember what on Earth they'd just been doing, and gasped. "Garry, what's happened to your face?" There were haphazard shallow scratches all over his cheeks. One was bleeding.

Garry blinked at her. He had her son in his arms. "Ib, don't you remember? The glass in the bakery? Walter?"

Something was-- hadn't she divorced Walter.... Memory crashed back on her like a wave. She hadn't divorced Walter, although in a way she had. Garry hadn't been her boyfriend for the past year, he'd been in the Gallery for the last fourteen. Walter was dead, his soul left in Garry's place.

"Oh my gosh," she whispered. "Garry, the Gallery must rewrite reality on the outside, too. Nobody knew where your painting had come from, but it was in the exhibit." She hurried away from Fabricated World, praying it was the last time, Garry and Garry hot on her heels, Big Garry putting a squirming Little Garry on the floor and holding his hand as they walked after her.

"What's going on?" she heard her son say, voice lilted up like he'd never been crying. She could only pray he hadn't connected enough to ever remember this.

Forgotten Portrait was gone, of course. And in its place--

...in its place...

Ib turned around to check. The alcove directly across had a curtain blocking it off, as though there was no painting to display.

Because Hanged Man was now in Forgotten Portrait's place... with Walter's face.

She'd half expected bloody eyes, but instead his eyes were wide open and whole, with an expression of sheer rage.

Ib shuddered. She didn't envy the next person to become lost in Fabricated World.

=o=

"So where did you meet, uhm, 'Big' Garry, sweetie?"

Ib was leaning against her mother's shoulder as they watched the Garries and her father play catch. It had been a month since they'd left Walter in the Gallery, and adjusting to the way the world had adjusted to his absence had taken a few weeks' time-- packing up the house so they could move back to their home city, mostly, and finding a new job for Ib and figuring out a way for Garry to finish his degree (surprisingly the Gallery had apparently thought of that, because when Garry contacted his old art school all of the dates for his records had been adjusted as if Garry really had been born only eighteen years ago. Ib thought it was hilarious that she was apparently dating a younger man.)

"At an art gallery," she said calmly. "I think it was fate."

"Garry's kind of an unusual name," her mother said. "Isn't it funny that now we have two?"

"It's wonderful," Ib said. "He's wonderful. He's so good with Bear."

Her mother glanced at her from the corner of her eye. "Is he... good to you, too? I know Walter kind of... stifled you, honey."

Ib almost laughed. "I trust him with my life," she answered. "I can talk to him about anything." (Including things no one else could ever know. They were pretty sure by now that little Garry didn't remember anything of the Gallery, and they were going to keep it that way.) "And he doesn't always know the right thing to do or say, but he always does his best even when it's hard for him."

"Quite a step up," her mother said approvingly. "I'm glad you're happy now."

Ib looked at her beautiful son and her silly knight in shining armor. Thinking about Walter still hurt, and she suspected it was going to for a long time. They still weren't sure Ib's new job was going to handle both the bills and Garry's extra class expenses, and Garry was still searching for a job himself. The future was unsure where once it had been fairly secure.

But yes. She was happy anyway.

Because if nothing else, she'd finally given Garry his lighter back.

\=O=/

**Author's Note:**

> Screw you, Walter.
> 
> This fic has been in my folder for over a year without a title; I finally realized "Well why don't I just keep going with the nursery rhyme theme like with Mary Mary, doi"
> 
> So the title comes from a children's song commonly called "Oranges and Lemons," which I liked for Walter's orange rose and because it's connected to a game where the goal is to not get your head figuratively chopped off. 8) The fact that this was a nursery rhyme I was actually fairly familiar with as a child might explain a couple things. ("Oranges and Lemons, say the bells of Saint Clement's--" Given context of fanfic community "Oranges and Lemons" seemed like an "iffy" title.)
> 
> I know the ending probably seems rather "neat," especially if you're someone who regards Garry as gay (I am choosing to write him as bi/pan, like myself, because I do what I want) but I figure if the Gallery can fool Ib's entire world into thinking Mary belongs there at all, it can trick the world into not realizing how long it kept Garry.
> 
> Also I thought the idea of Ib saving Garry and ending up older than him was funny, and it was part of the fic's starting point anyhow. XD
> 
> I had originally intended to go into MUCH more detail about the new form of the Gallery but, eh. I had a specific story I wanted to tell; I'm sure I'll have cause to visit this version of the Gallery in another dimension.


End file.
